Epic Games Store
The Epic Games Store is a digital video game storefront operated by Epic Games. It launched in December 2018. Storefront and software The Epic Games Store is a storefront for games available via the web and built into Epic Games' launcher application. Both web and application allow players to purchase games, while through the launcher the player can install and keep their games up to date. Epic's newer games will be exclusively available through its store and the company plans to fund developers to release exclusively through their store, using revenue guarantees to developers that opt for this, with Epic paying the difference should a game underperform. For other developers, Epic takes only a 12% share of revenue, the rest going to the developer, and for any games developed using the Unreal Engine, Epic forgoes the 5% revenue-based fee for those games sold through their storefront. Of that revenue fee, Epic pays for other services such as content delivery services, and ends up with about 5% of the gross revenue, though with economies of scale, this could increase to 6-7%. By Epic's calculations, the storefront's reduced portion of profits was sufficient to be profitable. Epic plans to offer one free game every two weeks through 2019. Epic Games also has offered sales, in which Epic absorbs the discount from the sale. For example, its first store-wide sale in May 2019 offered a discount of off any game valued at or more. The store at launch had a barebones set of features, but Epic plans to develop feature subsets comparable to other digital storefronts. Eventually the storefront will offer user reviews, but this feature will be opt-in by developers to avoid misuse by activities like review bombing. Additional planned features include cloud saving and achievements. There are no plans to include internal user forums. The storefront will include a ticket-based support system for users to report bugs and technical problems for games to developers, while developers will be encouraged to link to external forums and social channels of their chosing, like Reddit and Discord, in lieu of storefront-tied forums. It does not have features such as virtual reality headset support, nor expected to have any "game-shaped features" similar to Steam's trading cards designed to drive sales. Where possible, Epic plans to extend its "Support a Creator" program that it had launched in Fortnite Battle Royale to other games offered on the store. With the Support a Creator program, players can opt to indicate a streamer or content creator, selected by Epic based on submitted applications, to support. Supported streamers then receive revenue from Epic Games on microtransactions made through the Epic Games Store from the players that supported them, incentivizing these content creators; within Fortnite, creators had received about 5% of the cash value of the microtransactions. History Digital distribution of games for personal computers prior to the introduction of the Epic Games Store were through digital storefronts like Steam and GOG.com, with Steam being the dominant channel with an estimated 75% of all digital distribution in 2013. Valve Corporation, which operated Steam, took a 30% revenue cut of all games sold through their services, a figure matched by the other services like GOG.com. In August 2017, Epic's Tim Sweeney suggested that 30% was no longer a reasonable cut, and that Valve could still profit if they cut their revenue share to 8%. In early December 2018, Epic Games announced that it would open a digital storefront to challenge Steam by using a 12% revenue split rather than Steam's 30%. Epic also said that it would not impose digital rights management (DRM) restrictions on games sold through its platform. The store opened days later, on December 6, 2018, as part of the Game Awards, with a handful of games and a short list of upcoming titles. The next day Epic Games announced plans to release a free game every two weeks, which Epic Games plans to continue throughout 2019. The store was open for macOS and Windows platforms before expanding to Android and other platforms. Epic aims to release a storefront for Android devices, bypassing the Google Play Store, where it will similarly only take a 12% cut compared to Google's 30%. While Apple, Inc.'s monopoly on iOS currently makes it impossible for Epic to release an App Store there, analysts believe that if Google reacts to Epic's App Store by reducing their cut, Apple will be pressured to follow suit. Prior to the store's launch, its Director of Publishing Strategy, Sergey Galyonkin, had run Steam Spy, a website that collected Steam usage data from public profiles to create public sales statistics. He ran the site as a side-project, but used it to learn what developers would want from Epic's store, namely fewer social elements and less visual clutter. The store will be hand-curated until it opens to developer submissions in mid-2019. Once at this point, Epic's staff will still need to approve games for the store, a process that "mostly focuses on the technical side of things and general quality", according to Tim Sweeney. Sweeney does not expect this vetting process to be as stringent as the approvals needed to publish games on home video game consoles, but will use human evaluation to filter out bloatware and asset flips, among other poor-quality titles. Epic does not plan to allow adults-only mature content on the store. In January 2019, Ubisoft announced its plans to distribute its games via the Epic Games Store, with its upcoming Tom Clancy's The Division 2 to be sold on the storefront (in addition to Ubisoft's own Uplay storefront) instead of Steam, making it the first major third-party publisher to utilize the Epic Games Store. Publisher Deep Silver followed suit later that month, announcing that Metro Exodus will be exclusive to Epic Games Store for one year, at a reduced (in North Americahttps://www.metrothegame.com/en-us/news/epic-games-store-announcement/) compared to when it was offered on other storefronts. Epic has subsequently made partnerships with Private Division and Quantic Dream for publishing on the store. Reception The Epic Games Store was announced a few days after Valve had revealed a change in the Steam revenue sharing model that reduced Valve's take, reducing their revenue cut from 30% to 25% after a game made more than , and to 20% after . Several indie game developers expressed concern that this change was meant to help keep larger AAA developers and publishers and did little to support smaller developers. As such, when the Epic Games Store was announced, several journalists saw it as potentially disruptive to Steam's current model. Some developers and publishers have announced plans to release games that they were planning to release through Steam now exclusively through the Epic Games Store, or to have timed exclusivity on Epic's storefront before appearing on other services. Some consumers have reacted negatively towards the developers and publishers of games that have opted for Epic Games Store exclusivity, as it appears to create division in the gaming community similar to games that are released with timed exclusivity on home consoles. Metro Exodus, by developers 4A Games and published by Deep Silver, had been planned as a Steam release. However, Deep Silver announced a few weeks before release that the game would be a timed-exclusive on the Epic Games Store, eventually available on Steam a year after release. Some users were upset by this, review bombing the game on Steam and complaining at 4A Games. Deep Silver backed up 4A Games, and noted the decision for Epic Games Store exclusivity was made by Deep Silver's parent, Koch Media. In the days that followed after Metro Exodus release, players used the Steam review system to praise the game as Epic Games Store lacked user reviews at that time. Phoenix Point, a spiritual successor to X-COM by X-COM lead designer Julian Gollop, was successfully crowdfunded with players given the option of redemption keys on Steam or GOG.com. In March 2019, Gollop announced that they have opted to make Phoenix Point exclusive to the Epic Games Store for a year; backers would get a redemption key for the Epic Games Store as well as for Steam or GOG a year later when the exclusivity period was up, as well as being provided the first year's downloadable content for free. Gollop explained that with the exclusivity deal, his team received additional financial support to finish up Phoenix Point. Several backers were angered by this decision, believing that Gollop's team used their funds to get the game to a point where they could get external investment and then change the direction of the game. Gollop asserted that the deal with Epic Games did not alter Phoenix Point s ultimate direction, but did offer full refunds to backers if they wanted. Following a number of other time-exclusive planned releases on the Epic Games Store announced during the 2019 Game Developers Conference and further complaints from players about this, Steve Allison, head of the storefront division, admitted that they not want to cause such disruption in the gaming community. According to Allison, they will try to avoid making such large-scale exclusivity deals so close to a game's release, and want to try to respect what the community wants. According to Sweeney, they will continue to accept offers for exclusivity on the Epic Games Store from any developers or publishers that are interested, regardless of what prior plans they had made with Steam or other storefronts. Sweeney has also stated that they likely would stop seeking out exclusivity deals should Valve reduce its 30% revenue share, as he has compared that to a tax on game development, and feels that the only way to challenge Valve is through these exclusives. Complaints leveled at the Epic Games Store have also included disputed claims of the Epic or the Store client collecting data on users to sell to China, as if it were spyware. This criticism was spurred by a Reddit post that claimed that the Store client was collecting user data and asserted that it was tied to Tencent's involvement with Epic. Tencent is the largest video game publisher in the world and since 2012 has had a 40% ownership of Epic Games. Due to the nature of oversight that the Chinese government has with products released in China, Tencent has to maintain a close relationship with the government. According to writers for USGamer and Polygon, due to the state of US-China political relations at the time the Store was launched, coupled with the general distrust and xenophobia among some Western video game players of Chinese players, this accusation caught the attention of many that repeated the claims from the Reddit post, and leading these people to boycott the Store and those publishers that opted to sell their games exclusively on the store. Epic has stated that there is some data tracking but only to support useful functions such as importing one's Steam friend lists into their client, or to track streaming media viewership for their Support-A-Creator program. Some of the information in the Reddit post reflected initial methods to collect this data, but Epic stated they only used the data for their said features and since adjusted their data access to be more in line with how privacy settings should be handled. References }} External links * * Epic Games Store Roadmap via Trello Category:Epic Games Category:Internet properties established in 2018 Category:Online-only retailers of video games Category:Video game controversies